East Coast mainline should be back under public ownership – permanently, says Unite

The troubled East Coast rail mainline should be brought back into public ownership permanently, Unite, the country’s largest union, said today (Wednesday 16 May)

Unite, which represents rail engineering and technical staff, said it was the third time in a decade that the government had been forced to step in on the flagship London to Edinburgh line.

Unite national lead officer for the rail industry Hugh Roberts said: “After a hat-trick of failures on the East Coast mainline in the last 10 years with ministers having to intervene, now is the time for this service to be brought back under state ownership permanently.

“It is clear that the privatisation of the railways – the misguided brainchild of John Major’s Tory government in the 1990s – has hit the buffers. It has reached the end of the line.

“Bringing back the East Coast mainline under public control permanently should be the first stage in returning the whole network to public ownership.

“Rail privatisation has been an expensive and ideologically-driven failure that has been a constant drain on the taxpayer’s pocket.

“It would be best for the economy, the Treasury and the hard-pressed rail traveller paying through the nose for their tickets, if ministers blew the whistle on rail privatisation.”

Unite was commenting as the government pulled the plug on Virgin Trains East Coast - a joint venture between Stagecoach and Virgin which had been awarded the franchise for eight years in 2014.

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